pfscf

The Pathfinder Society Chronicle Filler (pfscf)

The "Pathfinder Society Chronicle Filler" (or short: pfscf) is a small command line application available for different platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux) that helps filling out chronicle sheets for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game from Paizo Inc.

You can download the program in the Releases section.

Usage

$ pfscf
The Pathfinder Society Chronicle Filler

Usage:
  pfscf [command]

Available Commands:
  fill        Fill a single chronicle sheet
  help        Help about any command
  template    Various actions on templates: list, describe, etc

Flags:
  -h, --help   help for pfscf

Use "pfscf [command] --help" for more information about a command.

Fill out a single chronicle

Filling out a single Pathfinder Society chronicle sheet can be done with the fill subcommand.

Example Call

$ pfscf fill pfs2 s103_chronicle.pdf s103_for_bob.pdf player=Bob char="The Bobbynator" xp=4

Proper explanation

$ pfscf fill -h
Fill a single chronicle sheet with parameters provided on the command line.

Usage:
  pfscf fill <template> <infile> <outfile> [flags]

Flags:
  -c, --cellBorder   Draw the cell borders of all added fields
  -g, --grid         Draw a coordinate grid on the output file
  -h, --help         help for fill

Required arguments:

• <template>: The name of the template to use. The template defines what you can put on the chronicle and where it is put. Currently the only supported template is pfs2, so always use that value.
• <infile>: The name of the input PDF file. This should be a single-paged PDF file that contains a chronicle sheet from a Pathfinder Society scenario. And I'm currently relying on that the page in this file has the same dimensions as in the original PDFs.
• <outfile>: The file to which the finished chronicle should be saved.

After the required arguments, you need to provide info on what should go into the chronicle. This is done by providing key/value pairs with format <key>=<value>.

Currently, the following keys are supported for config pfs2:

• player: Player name
• char: Character name
• societyid: Pathfinder Society ID, e.g. 123456-2001
• xp: Experience Points
• gp: Gold Pieces
• dj: Dayjob / Income
• fame: Fame
• event: Name of the PFS event
• code: Event code
• date: The date on which the session occurred
• gm: Name / Signature of the Gamemaster
• gmid: PFS Player ID of the Gamemaster
• fac1name: Name of faction 1
• fac1rep: Reputation for faction 1
• fac2name: Name of faction 2
• fac2rep: Reputation for faction 2
• fac3name: Name of faction 3
• fac3rep: Reputation for faction 3

You can always get the complete list for a template by calling pfscf template describe <template>

Fill out multiple chronicles (e.g. for a complete group)

Not yet supported, unless you repeat the "Fill out a single chronicle" section for each member of the group. But I want to include some batch mode in the future as well.

Writing your own templates

Please see the Documentation on writing your own templates

FAQ

• Q: What types of chronicles are supported at the moment?

  A: At the moment only the chronicles for Pathfinder 2. In the near future most likely also Starfinder and Pathfinder 1. Although the latter will be more complicated, as Paizo seems to have changed the chronicle layout between seaons.

• Q: I have a Society scenario and want to use pfscf on that. But it keeps complaining that some operation is not allowed because of PDF permissions on that file. What should I do?

  A: The permission settings in place on Paizos PDFs do not allow to do things like extracting pages. Which I can totally understand for the scenario and their property in general, but this makes life a little bit harder. On Windows you can open the PDF file of the scenario in a PDF viewer of your choice, go to the last page with the chronicle, and then print this using the "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer. This will produce a PDF file on your local disk that you can use together with pfscf. I assume that for macOS and linux similar options exist.

• Q: What about scenario-specific options? For example, I have this one scenario where I need an easy way to strike out boons that the group did not get.

  A: Actually, that is on my roadmap and I have some ideas for this. However, neither do I own all Society scenarios nor do I have enough time to provide the config for multiple dozens of scenarios that I own. But... contributions are welcome! When this feature is available, then no programming skills will be required for providing a scenario-specific config. Just a text editor and some time to fiddle out the coordinates for all the relevant parts. And what do I also have on the roadmap? An auto-updater for such configs! So if people would contribute scenario-specific configs, then other people don't need to update their installation of pfscf every two weeks, but just call the program with some yet-to-be-determined parameter (think of pfscf update-config) and you get the latest and greatest scenario-specific config automatically downloaded to your computer.

• Q: Oh noes! I have found a bug! I HAVE FOUND A BUG!!1!

  A: First, calm down. Second, please report this to me by opening an issue. If you do so, please provide as many details as possible. What operating system are you running? What did you do (exact command line, input files), what did then happen (exact output)? I will try to find out what can be done about this and try to fix it as soon as possible.

• Q: I have this absolutely great idea for a missing feature!

  A: Yay! Feature ideas are always welcome! Please open an issue in this repository and describe your idea! The more details, the better! But please be also aware that I am doing this in my free time, and some things might be really, really complicated to realize. So please don't be mad if things might take a little bit longer or sometimes even won't be done. But... it's open source, contributions are always possible and welcome :) Still: If you have an idea that you think would improve this project, please create an issue here. You'll never know unless you tried!

• Q: Will there ever be a GUI for pfscf?

  A: Not by me. I suck at GUIs and am also not interested in having one for pfscf. But if you're interested in making one and using pfscf in the background, then I'm sure that lots of people will love it! Honestly! It's just not something for me, sorry.

• Q: Why golang?

  A: It produces standalone executables for all major platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux) and users do not have to install any additional software to use pfscf. Also I wanted to give golang a try anyways (first go project for me), and then it's always good to have something that you plan to use yourself.

Legal disclaimer

Pathfinder, the Pathfinder logo, the Pathfinder Society, Starfinder, the Starfinder Society and the Starfinder logo are registered trademarks of Paizo Inc. Their games use the Open Gaming License and are pretty cool. Support their games!

This program is being developed as private hobby. Although this program is intended to be used with chronicles for organized play from Paizo, I am in no way associated with Paizo Inc. Also, you're using this program at your own risk. I won't take any responsibility or liability for any direct or indirect damage, data loss, data corruption and the like done by using this program. I cannot guarantee that the program is free of bugs (on the contrary, I am pretty sure that there is a sufficient number of bugs still included), and if I am made aware of a problem, I won't guarantee on a timeline until when that bug will be fixed.